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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think this man must be the ugh-est smuggest parent in Britain

98 replies

parrots · 17/08/2016 09:37

"I pride myself on being what I call a ‘Golden Parent’ - taking the top spot on the winners’ podium of parenting..."

Can't see a thread about this, but here's Lynne Franks' son outlining his parental perfection in the Daily Mail....

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3730468/My-AbFab-mother-absolutely-awful-parent-PR-guru-Lynne-Franks-inspired-Absolutely-Fabulous-son-says-baby-boomers-like-selfish-raise-children.html

OP posts:
ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 17/08/2016 10:23

I'm assuming he won't accept any of his mother's vast inheritance after she ruined his childhood?

Memoires · 17/08/2016 10:27

Sadly, he's gone too far in the other direction, and has wound up exactly like his mother just with a different focus.

I pity his children more than I pity him.

kaitlinktm · 17/08/2016 10:30

So sick of baby boomers being blamed for everything. I hate the thought of all the parents at the school gate slagging off their baby boomer parents. Just wait until their children are teenagers and young adults (or even 40 in the case of Josh Howie) and we'll see how good their parenting really was. Sadly I won't be here to see it though.

The man sounds a complete child himself. He can only afford to give his children this sort of "parenting" on a (presumably uncertain) stand-up comedian's wage because his mother underwrote his mortgage and probably supports him financially in other ways too. Otherwise he would be nine-to-fiving it like lesser mortals.

Oldraver · 17/08/2016 10:31

What an ungrateful little shit. He gets to piss about telling a few jokes on a night, when the dc's are in bed of course, then can be father of the year all day. And all because his Mum funds his mortgage and free holiday to Majorca and Devon (I think)

HandbagCrab · 17/08/2016 10:32

What a spoilt whiny-arse! I'd perhaps have a modicum of respect if he wasn't trading on his mum's name or living in a house she paid for. Probably thinks he's the next David Baddiel, oh what an accolade.

CatNip2 · 17/08/2016 10:40

I read the mum's response this morning without even reading his story and was so incensed I registered with the DM to leave a comment!

I hope the brat of a son reads these comments and those on the DM. What a dick.

The only thing his mother did wrong as a parent was give him too much and try to be too good a mother.

PerspicaciaTick · 17/08/2016 10:48
  1. Parenting isn't a competition.
  2. There are no awards for parenting, and barely any thanks.
  3. This isn't about your need to be the best, it is about meeting your children's needs to the best of your ability.
  4. The parenting you describe is happening in hundreds of thousands of families across the country, you are not exceptional.
AnotherEffingOrangeRevel · 17/08/2016 10:48

Perhaps it's all a PR stunt cooked up between son and mum to boost his ailing career?

CurlyMoo · 17/08/2016 10:50

Well he certainly isn't going to be given a writing job; that piece was all over the place.

SlinkyVagabond · 17/08/2016 10:54

Oh I wonder if he'd be interested on coming on mn to solve all our sadly lacking parenting skills? (Evil Grin )

bushtailadventures · 17/08/2016 10:58

He's a dick whose life has largely been funded by his mother, he'll be paying it all back now then will he? Well, at least the 10 years worth from when he wasn't actually in education. Funny he has such a low opinion of Nannies too, when he married one!

Memoires · 17/08/2016 10:59

Slinky Grin now that would be fun!

Thefitfatty · 17/08/2016 11:02

Perhaps it's all a PR stunt cooked up between son and mum to boost his ailing career?

If that's the case, shouldn't he be trying to be funny? The article is as funny as day old toast.

bibliomania · 17/08/2016 11:03

Perspicacia, totally agree with you.

When the arduous parenting tasks he lists include "the sourcing of requested TV shows", I can't say I'm overwhelmed by the magnitude of his achievements. (Wot, you found the tv remote by your very own self? Clever boy!)

lljkk · 17/08/2016 11:06

You guys are completely missing the point.

It's thinly disguised misogyny by the Tabloid Trash.

He trashes his mother because she wasn't very motherly, didn't put him first. * GASP * SHOCK, she had a career in the 1980s. She had her own life & didn't make motherhood her primary role. The same article could have nominally been written by Margaret Thatcher's children. There is almost no comment about where TF was his father in this picture; why not pick on dad for all of his selfish failings. The DM doesn't care about uninvolved fathers, do they.

A cousin who adored my parents also described them as 2 of the most self-centred people she ever met. We made ourselves much more devoted parents to own children. So I recognised the guy's backlash, to want to be a very involved father. It's a shame he is stuck in the past of blaming his mom; I guess he needed the money hence this article was written.

SpringerS · 17/08/2016 11:06

What's with all of the anger? His piece is a long-winded, hyperbolic, boreathon but at it's centre is a man who had a very unhappy childhood and desperately wants the opposite for his children. If he says his childhood was unhappy then why not believe him? Especially when what he is saying is concurrent with what psychological and neurological evidence we have about child-rearing. It doesn't mean he dislikes his mother as adult company or believes she didn't love him and his sister but the way he grew up does actually sound pretty grim.

He's also not claiming to be the best parent ever, he's saying that in his experience, modern parents tend to be better parents than their parents. The main mistake he is making there is to think that his 70s/80s childhood was typical of every other child of that era. My parents are babyboomers and were on the whole fantastic parents. My mum was a stay at home mum and my dad drove a bin lorry so we had very little money but we had all their time and love. My mum is fantastic with money, so we never did without anything we needed and had a lot that we wanted, including them buying a rundown old house in a lovely area so we could grow up in a safe neighbourhood. My dad is also very inventive and used to bring home other people's rubbish and recycle it into new stuff for us, so our big garden was full of fantastic play items, like a two story tree-house with a wrap around balcony and amazing swing off the side. Little means more to me than looking back and seeing how much of what Santa brought for me was hand made/restored. The thought of my parents spending December working away in the shed or at the table after we were in bed, making our Christmas gifts just stuns me. And they weren't alone in parenting like that, in that era.

CheerfulYank · 17/08/2016 11:08

WTAF. How would his precious snowflakes eat if his mum hadn't earned all the money?

Furthermore I think it's bad parenting to make your children the center of the universe. Sorry, but I do.

emotionsecho · 17/08/2016 11:08

I note how he puts all the blame and accusations of selfishness and poor parenting on his mother and says not a word against his father, typical.

Dollius01 · 17/08/2016 11:09

God, heaven forfend his mother chose to have a career. What an evil woman. What about his father? Oh no, I forgot, Men are Very Important and deserve to have Proper Careers.

And bottles for those older three? That is not good parenting, mate.

gonetoseeamanaboutadog · 17/08/2016 11:12

He's bitter and rather mean.

LoisWilkersonsLastNerve · 17/08/2016 11:14

He seems to have opened up a can of family worms. I feel quite sorry for Lynn Franks. What a shock reading that must have been. Unless it was her idea.....

kaitlinktm · 17/08/2016 11:22

She says it was totally unexpected Lois - and she also points out that he barely mentions his father and seems to blame him for nothing.

It is his condemnation of a whole generation of parents which appalls me - what breathtaking arrogance thinking he can speak for a whole generation.

Of course it could be a cooked-up PR stunt, but I felt more sympathy for his mother (even though AbFab's Edina was inspired by her).

MovingOnUpMovingOnOut · 17/08/2016 11:22

Jeez he's an insufferable twat. Well done for being a smug mummy Josh.

I do wonder if it's entirely healthy to put so much on one's children? The weight of expectation must be very heavy.

As for his mother's reply? Boom! Grin

CousinViolent · 17/08/2016 11:27

I wonder if he's been supremely stitched up by the Fail. There's something very odd and stilted about the writing of that piece that suggests he might have given an interview over the phone or something ('We're doing a piece on the difference in parenting between the generations, Mr Howie') and answered leading questions which they then wove into a first-person article. The smirky dropping in of the children's names sounds suspicious to me.

(Though of course, if it was a stitch up you'd think Lynn Franks would be striding into PR goddess mode to expose the con...)

CousinViolent · 17/08/2016 11:28

(Not defending him if he did write it though - what a prize arse!)